How to Repair User Permissions in Mac OS X

In modern versions of Mac OS X, repairing permissions from the Disk Utility app doesn’t repair the users file permissions, oddly this has to be done separately on a per-user basis. If you’re running into problems with Spotlight not finding documents or folders, or if you’re having other issues that can usually be fixed with a permissions repair, this can often resolve those problems.

This method works in OS X Yosemite, OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, and Lion. This is a great tip from a Mac Genius that one of our readers sent in, it’s well written so we’ll just publish the entire thing verbatim:

Repairing User Permissions in OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, etc

You’ll need to reboot to perform this, and then use the same resetpassword utility that is used to change passwords in OS X, but instead choosing a hidden option.

When you use the Disk Utility app and Repair Permissions — it doesn’t actually repair the permission settings on folders and files in your Home folder where your documents and personal applications reside.

In the newest versions of OS X, there is an additional Repair Permissions application utility hidden away. This tool is located inside boot Repair Utilities. Here’s how to access it.

Restart OS X and hold down the Command and R keys.

You will boot into the Repair Utilities screen. On top, in the Menu Bar click the Utilities item then select Terminal.

In the Terminal window, type “resetpassword” (without the quotes) and hit Return.

The Password reset utility launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on the icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the drop-down below it, select the user account where you are having issues.

At the bottom of the window, you’ll see an area labeled ‘Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs’. Click the Reset button there.

The reset process takes a couple of minutes. When it’s done, quit the programs you’ve opened and restart your Mac. Notice that ‘Spotlight’ starts re-indexing immediately.

71 Comments

“…repairing permissions from the Disk Utility app doesn’t repair the users file permissions, oddly this has to be done separately on a per-user basis.” Well, there is nothing odd about this: Unix and Unix-like operating systems (i.e., Linux) have user permissions for user access control and disk permissions for the OS when dealing with files. Both sets of permissions are independent of each other.

My 2008 macbook pro is telling me that for verifying permissions the estimated time is a whopping 11 HOURS!!!
Is this normal?
Nothing has been normal about this machine for a long long time.
It’s even been to the Apple “Cannot replicate lab” where of course, the geniuses there couldn’t manage to replicate a problem I had immediately upon booting up the machine when it was shipped back!!!

It’s also listing a hell of alot of open error 5’s regarding various Nokia phone plugins. I don’t have, nor have I ever had, a Nokia phone remotely associated with this computer at all! Are these standard plugins loaded initially with the original software?

That is not normal. Run Disk Utility to make sure your hard drive isn’t failing, then try running Repair Permissions from the recovery volume as described above. Let the whole process complete before interrupting it.

A possible solution may be to back up your Mac using Time Machine, then reformat and reinstall OS X, then restore from a backup. Or take it to Apple and see what their support suggests.

Might be important to mention the purpose of repair permissions on your home folder. For most folks I wouldn’t recommend doing this as part of a ‘routine’ maintenance as it won’t make your Mac fun faster or anything.

In my experience running Repair Permission is one of the most overused, but least effective troubleshooting steps. It’s usually only effective if you’re having trouble installing something. Or, maybe, if someone was messing around with their permissions in the Get Info field on a volume or something. Or if a folder gets moved from one home folder to another – oddball situations like that.

But most of the time when I hear someone recommend Repairing Permissions as a troubleshooting step, it’s more a ‘punt’ than anything.

And then there are folks like Larry above who will probably gain nothing for his time spent on this. Chances are he may even screw something up by resetting the ACLs and canceling the rest of the process.

I mentioned in the lead that repairing user home permissions can fix some of the odder Spotlight issues, where exact match files and folders won’t be located, etc. But yes I agree, a lot of suggestions to repair permissions are nothing more than a punt.

This can also fix problems where you can’t move a file to the trash, a program doesn’t open when an associated file is double clicked, and some other problems. Agreed that it won’t fix many problems some think it can. But Apple’s engineers often do recommend it be tried.

I’ve found, over the years, that some odd problems with no good explanation are fixed by permission repair.

Well, I have always been told that to repair HD you should restart from DVD install or from another HD (or partition with Disk Utilities).
And that to repair permissions you have not to restart (from another HD or partition) but to do it using your own main system boot disk…

In fact, this is a reset of user home folder permissions to default settings and so it also resets possibly intentional changes to file permissions in user folder. It has been possible even before Lion, just access to the Password utility was a bit easier.
I agree, that Disk Utility’s Repair permissions is very overused and most of the folks are not aware, that it repairs just some of the Apple installed SW and none of non-Apple SW permissions.

THANK YOU! This solved some weird problems with textedit and quicktime player beachballing at every start. I have been tampering with permissions since I’m moving my account from another computer, and this trick seems to have straightened things up!

The permission repair never completes itself on my Mac Book Pro, for my own user & I’m the only non-system user on the system. What does that mean – should I create a new user and move my static files over? Should I use the migration utility – or will migration copy my bad permissions and ACLs?

Huge thanks for the tip. After upgrading to OS X 10.7.3 today, my admin user account began receiving an alert (“Finder wants to make changes.. enter your password”) when I tried moving files to the Trash. Even when I entered the password, the files vanished immediately when moved into the Trash and the Trash still appeared empty. After repairing user permissions as described above and rebooting, and the alerts stopped and files I’d moved into the Trash were there. Back to normal. Thanks!

I’m doing this on my MacBook Pro to solve some problems mentioned above, but it’s taking too long. It started more than 15 minutes ago. I have a MacBook Pro early 2011 with Lion. The system is on an SSD, my home folder on and HDD (internal). Should I stop this?

I have tried EVERYTHING to fix my permissions so I can use Photoshop. I have spent HOURS and HOURS. Nothing has even somewhat worked. And then I found this quick fix and it fixed everything within 2 minutes. THANK YOU!

Hi, I follow exactly the way to reset password, and restart my i-mac 2011, nothing new happen, does anyone have the same result? I don’t see anything about this “spotlight” re-index. My hard drive info still says I have custom access. I also have a back-up drive attached, now it knock me out instead, I have only read permission. Please help, thanks!

I’ve spent hours trying to fix my permissions so i can properly install Hallmark card studio and Roxio Toast titanium 11 with no luck, I’ve tried the resetpassword option and still have had no luck. How do I fix this on my macbook running OS X Lion?

What if the user accounts are in a different disk, than the boot disk. The resetpassword utility only works on the system disks., it doesn’t show any of my external disks where my user home directory is.

I am also having issues with this method. When bringing up the Reset Password window, and selecting my main drive, I get ‘No available users’ for the drop down window. I hit ‘Reset’ anyways and it just spins forever, never completing.

For some reason, my Mountain Lion install did not create a Mtn. Lion Recovery partition, so I cannot get to the ACL repair in the usual way. Actually, I think it installed the Recovery partition, but it’s now not there for some reason. I know… strange.

I was thinking of using the above-mentioned command from InsanelyOne to correct a bunch of “Fetching…” permissions, probably due to upgrading from Snow Leo to Lion to Mountain Lion. Wondering if anyone has used the terminal command ($ sudo chmod -R -N /Users/username), and if so, did it go well. Thanks!

Out of the blue iTunes stopped allowing me to add files because of a lack of “privileges.” I followed this tip and it worked. Now, a week later, the problem is back. First time I’ve had this issue since OS X was released, and I’m not liking it.

Hi Nicolas, I have exactly the same problem. iTunes stopped me adding files because of “unable to save to Macintosh HD”. I’ve run resetpassword and now its rebooting with the spin wheel. Been running for 20 mins now!

I am running this fix to repair permissions and acl’s. My macbook pro has been running this process for 24 hours now. I’ve just got the spinner and the message “running”. Do I quit resetpassword or wait. Someone mentioned time machine having to run a full backup. Is that why this is taking so long? A full backup on my machine take 2 1/2 days.

How can I apply this to a set of user folders that reside on my server. I have been running into some permission issues with some students, and I would like to apply this to all users instead of a 1 to 1 basis.

[…] has been modified by a third party application. Oftentimes you can just run through the process to repair user permissions, but that’s not always guaranteed to sort out a problem, and in some situations you need to […]

[…] digging around because of frequent errors regarding access to files or ownership, try using the Recovery Mode method of repairing user permissions that works with OS X 10.7, 10.8, and newer, which can usually sort out those problems automatically […]

I have been working on this off and on for the last couple of days. I get stuck at:
4. The Password reset utility launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on the icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the drop-down below it, select the user account where you are having issues.’

When the Password reset utility launches, there is no icon at the top and the drop down says “no available users”.

Trish, make sure you select the icon of the Hard Disk and then the list of users becomes available in the pull down menu. You can then select the one you want to reset ACL for….and repeat for each user you wish to do this for.

I went through steps 1-3 but when I come to 4., there is no hard drive icon to find the drop down you mention to “Reset Home Directory Permissions” PLEASE HELP…

4. The Password reset utility launches, but you’re not going to reset the password. Instead, click on the icon for your Mac’s hard drive at the top. From the drop-down below it, select the user account where you are having issues.
5. At the bottom of the window, you’ll see an area labeled ‘Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs’. Click the Reset button there.

This might also be useful, shows how to do it without rebooting into repair

Reset permissions

If the issue started after changing the permissions of items in your home folder, reset permissions:

– From the Finder menu bar, choose Go > Home. Your home folder opens.

– Choose File > Get Info. An Info window for your home folder opens.

— If the Sharing & Permissions section at the bottom of the window isn’t open, click the triangle in that section to open it.

— If the Lock button at the bottom of the window shows a closed lock lock , click the lock and enter an administrator name and password.

– Click the Action menu in the bottom corner of the window, then choose “Apply to enclosed items.” Click OK to confirm the action. A progress bar appears at the top of the window.

– When the progress bar completes, open the Terminal app, which is in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder.
Paste or type this command in Terminal, then press Return:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

—– On U.S. keyboards, the ` character is just above the Tab key. After entering the diskutil command, if Terminal says that permissions reset on user home directory failed (error -69841), enter chflags -R nouchg ~, then enter the diskutil command again.

This worked fine for me except the “Done” button never goes from grey to clickable. I know it says it can take ‘several minutes’ but mine seems infinite time. How long can that step take and is there a workaround if it gets stuck there? I am able to change the password of the admin and the root but not of my user for this laptop.

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